The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775

Tomlinson, AbrahamProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.3
Word count
183K words
Chapters
19

Tags

English Originals Oral HistoryMilitary Military HistoryHistorical ReappraisalWar ChroniclesColonial WarsPersonal WritingSoldier's DiaryTrue StoryDocumentary NarrativeEighteenth CenturyPersonal Account

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 by Abraham TomlinsonAuthor: Tomlinson, Abraham,Language: English, Class: E201: History: America: Revolution (1775-1783), Release Date: Feb 21, 2007

Editor's review

This book is a historical source text in the free Project Gutenberg e-book collection, comprising the military journals of two ordinary soldiers between 1758 and 1775. Unlike generals' memoirs or official campaign histories, its value lies in a "bottom-up" perspective: marches, camp life, daily duties, comradeship, and personal feelings form the substance of the narrative, letting readers sense the texture of eighteenth-century North American military life. The text is in English and not long, making it suitable as primary source material to be read alongside background on the American Revolutionary War. A caveat: diary-form narrative is fragmentary and lacks a continuous plot, and given the age of the text, personal and place names and old-style spellings may pose obstacles. It is better suited to readers interested in colonial-era military and social history as supplementary material to browse than to general readers seeking a complete story or literary quality. The e-edition is easy to obtain, convenient for excerpting and comparative research.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First get an overview of the North American colonial conflicts from 1758 to 1775; the journals are easier to place in context afterward.
  2. Read in chronological order, marking names of people, places, and unit numbers for easy cross-reference.
  3. Treat it as historical source material rather than a story, and consult maps and chronologies as needed.
  4. Don't agonize over old-style spellings word by word; focus on the records of daily duties and emotions

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19

FAQ

Is this book suitable for history beginners? Not very suitable for complete beginners. The diary form is fragmentary and the language is old-style English with little background setup; reading goes much more smoothly if you already have a basic framework of colonial-era military history. Beginners should start with general histories and then use this book as supplementary source material.
What background knowledge is needed to read this book? It helps to understand the mid-eighteenth-century Anglo-French contest for North America, the difference between colonial militia and regular troops, and the situation on the eve of the American Revolutionary War. With a rough timeline in mind, the march, camp, and duty records in the journals are easier to understand in their historical place.
What historical value do the two soldiers' journals have? Their value lies in the ordinary soldier's perspective: records of march routes, camp life, daily duties, and personal feelings, filling gaps left by official campaign histories and generals' memoirs. Researchers can use them to examine soldiers' daily experience and mentality, and general readers can gain a more ground-level sense of history.

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About the author

Tomlinson, Abraham Author

Abraham Tomlinson is an author about whom very limited public information is available; all that is currently known is that one work appears under his name, The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775. Judging from its title, the book belongs to the genre of diaries or wartime records, collecting the military journals of two ordinary soldiers between 1758 and 1775, a period spanning roughly the later stages of the Seven Years' War to the eve of the American Revolution. Texts of this kind, written in the first person from the soldiers' perspective, tend to focus on the details of daily marching, garrison duty, combat, and army life, and possess considerable value as historical sources, offering primary material for the study of the eighteenth-century North American military environment and the experiences of common soldiers. Because public sources give no clear account of Tomlinson's own life, identity, or the specific role he played in compiling or editing the book, and his nationality, dates, and professional background cannot be confirmed, his contribution can presently be understood only through this work itself.